Online Public Relations Thoughts

Daily entries on Public Relations and communications ideas and trends

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Telling It Like It Is

The newspaper industry may never have heard speeches like these. It must have been depressing to be in the room. From a PR perspective, we too should be in the bleachers cheering on the industry in its effort to turn around. Newspapering continues to be the single largest new content provider. We need that content generation to get impartial evaluation of messages and to get these messages distributed.

I agree with the view of Macy's Chief Marketing Officer. Newspapers need to play to their strength -- local news generation -- and to get away from running Associated Press and Reuters wire stories that everyone has read 12 hours before online. While this will make the job of the PR practitioner more difficult, it is still the way to go. The value of newspapers is content generation and not content redistribution. That is why downsizing of newsrooms is wrong but regrettably the way the industry seems to be going.

Reporters are asked to do so much more now there is a danger of a decline in quality in both reporting and editing. There have been alarms about this already but no one in newspaper management seems to be listening yet. They are still scrambling to find a model that works and to return to former levels of profitability. Reporters and editors are taking the brunt of the transition. This means to me that PR should assist reporters in doing their work with greater alacrity and precision. We have a valuable opportunity to become partners to the media rather than adversaries. Let's hope we don't blow it.